Do F₀ Peak Alignment and F₀ Peak location Differ Across Different Foci Types in Iraqi Arabic?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25130/Lang.9.2.P2.10Keywords:
Iraqi Arabic; F₀ peak alignment; F₀ peak location; Prosodic focus realizationAbstract
This study investigates the prosodic realization of focus in Iraqi Arabic by analyzing F₀ peak alignment and F₀ peak location across neutral, information, and contrastive focus conditions in diverse syntactic positions (initial, penultimate, and final). Adopting a question-answer paradigm, the study elicited focus in a controlled experimental setting and analyzed the alignment and location of F₀ peaks within the stressed syllables of focused words, as well as their influence on post-focus and pre-focus words. The findings reveal no statistically significant differences in F₀ peak alignment or location across focus types in any syntactic position, suggesting that Iraqi Arabic does not systematically encode focus through these prosodic cues alone. While minor trends suggest that contrastive focus may exhibit slightly later peak alignment and higher intensity values compared to information focus, these effects do not reach statistical significance. The absence of consistent prosodic differentiation in alignment and location raises important questions about the role of other phonetic correlates—such as duration, intensity, and phrasing—in marking focus in Iraqi Arabic. These findings contribute to the broader understanding of prosodic focus realization in Arabic dialects, underscoring the need for further research into alternative acoustic and perceptual cues that may serve as primary focus markers in Iraqi Arabic.
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